Submission to the Government of Canada’s Review of the

While there is a long list of reforms that can and should be made to our system, the CCLA has focused in this brief on four main issues: 1) The need for a statutory duty to document; 2) The need to expand the scope of the Act (i.e., by expanding the list of institutions to whom it applies); 3) The need to simplify and narrow the scope of exemptions and create a public interest override; and 4) The. [...] Cabinet documents and the bulk of records in minister’s offices—“which represent the core of decision-making and policy formation”—continue to fall outside the scope of the Act.29 By replacing all exclusions in the Act with exemptions, and by adopting the proposed amendments to the definition of “government institution” outlined in Recommendation 3, the Information Commissioner would have jurisdic. [...] 57 Canada, Submission of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada to the President of the Treasury Board: Review of the Access to Information Act (ATIA) (Ottawa: February 2021), online: . [...] 11 Recommendation 13: The Government should mandate the appropriate resourcing of the Office of the Information Commissioner and amend the Act to permit the head of an institution to approve extensions not exceeding 30 days, and thereafter all extensions of the time limit to respond to an access request shall be subject to the approval of the Information Commissioner The ATIA requires the head of. [...] Recommendation 14: Amend the Act to require the authorization of the Minister to apply exemptions when time limits have been breached The Government should amend the Act to include a provision to the effect that, notwithstanding any other provision in the Act, the authorization of the Minister is required to apply exemptions whenever a time limit has been breached.72 As the Centre for Law and Demo.